BOULDER — Prohibiting colleges from considering race when admitting students is like taking a sledgehammer to current diversity efforts, a law student at the University of Colorado at Boulder said to a roomful of students Thursday.

“The question is, ‘Are we there yet?’ ” said Joe Neguse, rattling off statistics that betray how little ethnic diversity there is at CU-Boulder this fall.

Six percent of undergraduate students are Latino, when that group makes up almost 20 percent of the state’s population.

“Obviously, we’re not there yet,” Neguse said.

The students had gathered to hear a debate on Amendment 46, on the ballot this November, which would ban governments and public colleges from looking at race or gender in hiring, admissions or awarding contracts.

Proponents say the measure is a long-overdue idea that would weight preferences — particularly in higher education — on socioeconomic status or family situation rather than race.

Opponents decry the measure as a step backward in the push to bring underrepresented groups to college and to the forefront of the economy.

Proponent Jessica Peck Corry recalled sitting in a Washington, D.C., bar when an African- American drove by in a BMW and a man sitting nearby called it an “affirmative-action BMW.”

When she angrily pressed him on what he meant, he told her that the reason the driver had such a good job was because of federal race preference programs.

“That’s bigotry,” said Corry, who is on leave from The Independence Institute to push for the passage of Amendment 46. “These programs can flourish and prosper when you base it on need, and not race and gender. Then you eliminate the shadow that women and minorities can’t succeed.”

Yet opponents say that in California, which has had a similar law on the books since 1996, fewer students of color get admitted to the state’s top-flight institutions such as the University of California at Los Angeles or Berkeley.

Melissa Hart, a CU law professor, said Thursday that she worries about “little effects” the law might have. Like its impact on admissions to a gifted and talented kindergarten class, which weights boys’ 5-year-old scores because they’re not as developed as girls at that age.

“We’d have a class full of little girls if this law passed,” she said.

College administrators worry that the proposed law would make doling out dozens of private scholarships a paperwork nightmare for public schools.

Take the Metropolitan State College of Denver. The school’s small endowment supports roughly $60,000 in private money a year for race- or gender-based scholarships, which the school couldn’t administer under the proposed law, said the school’s president, Steve Jordan.

At CU-Boulder, officials are trying to determine what would happen to more than 100 privately funded scholarships with clear intents to help students of color or women.

CU alumnus J.D. Abrams and his wife, Elsie, give about $100,000 a year toward an endowment for scholarships for American Indian students.

If the law prohibited targeted race- based need, Elsie Abrams said they would probably yank their funding.

“We would stop contributing if they’re going to take that away from us,” she said from her home in Austin, Texas. “It’s very dear to us. We wouldn’t be contributing if it wasn’t helping those kids.”

Ward Connerly’s California-based organization has given about $300,000 to the Amendment 46 campaign and about $3 million total to support similar efforts in several states.

Connerly, a former University of California regent, said the drop in minority enrollment in his state might mean schools aren’t being creative enough in admitting students based on socioeconomics.

Connerly also brandishes the success of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to counter the argument that society is “institutionally sexist, that there is a glass ceiling for women and minorities.”

“The reality is, you wouldn’t have 18 million people ready to bestow the responsibility of the presidency to a woman if they were a bunch of racists or sexists,” he said.

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